Some Things Never Change, But Some Things Do

Andy: To what degree has BPM moved closer to ownership by the business side, and out of the domain of IT?

Laura: The degree to which CIOs "get" the business side varies greatly. Some are very in tune; some have come up through the IT ranks and are more purely technical. But they’re smart, and they know that the better they can help solve the business problem, the more value they deliver to the organization.

When it comes down to a conflict between what IT wants and what business wants, it’s about a 50/50 win ratio. And that’s OK, because it means at least SOMEONE wants us! So the best we can do in that case is give our sponsor enough ammunition to win the battle.

Sometimes IT will select a system because it’s programming-intensive, and demands a lot of coding, and so they have job security. The business users prefer a system based on models that can easily be adapted to their particular needs. It depends on the level of the decision-maker. The CIO is smart enough to realize the more productivity he or she can get from a system, the better. A lower-level manager might be more interested in control than in overall efficiency gains.

Karin: Indeed, the process has started, but an education and training barrier still exists. IT specialists are trained about IT as a discipline. Financial analysts master Excel while in business school. Business analysts need to be afforded the time and tools to learn how process modeling and reporting can provide greater insights into the business. So there is a human element that needs to occur in concert with the advancements we’re providing in our modeling and reporting tools.

Andy: The subject of process and modeling tools has come up a couple times. To what degree have those enhancements to BPM had an impact on moving the needle on the ownership issue toward the business side?

Theresa: It’s difficult to find the right metrics for measuring success. There are two extremes. One is the organization that expects an extremely granular reporting base—what do I do every 15 minutes? Any productivity you might have gained is lost out the window when employees are more focused on telling you what they did than actually doing it!

The other extreme is the organization that feels that the "people" factor is too vague to measure, and thus results through that filter become fuzzy. Process improvement is not necessarily incremental; the "15-minute report" is irrelevant when improvement comes in fits and starts. Which is the way people behave.

Often, it’s not measurable because the result is based on the mythology of the past. Did you REALLY have 10 people doing that task, all the time? Or were there some people who were devoted only part of the time? Or only at the busiest times of the month?

Master of My Own Destiny
Andy: Can—or maybe the question is, should—individual workers have the ability to "improve" a process in midstream. If a loan origination officer can see a way to shave a few seconds off a process, should he/she be able to make that change?

Laura: The business side isn’t taking over the tool itself, but they ARE taking a lot more control over process definitions and continuous improvement. Through the reporting and the process intelligence and metrics they get from the BPM system, they have enough control to react to bottlenecks and spikes in the workflow on a continuous basis. But what I CAN’T and SHOULDN’T do is change the process flow and the process model by myself. That requires oversight and governance. These are processes that affect a lot of people and a lot of departments; you’re not going to let one manager change the workflow on a whim. They don’t necessarily know what the ripple effect downstream is going to be.

Karin: We make it easy for customers to change their processes and user-interfaces, and we enable them to do it without involving IT. But we don’t often hear the request for end-users to rewire a process. BPM processes help an organization run their business, so you wouldn’t want any end-user to be able to alter a core process unilaterally. Instead, we’ve done two things. First, we’re enabling process owners and business analysts to alter their processes and make changes in real-time. Second, we’re enabling organizations to build processes which incorporate human judgment. These processes are non-deterministic and often case-based. We enable knowledge workers to influence the processing of the case in real-time and based on the case specifics and his or her own judgment.

Theresa: It depends on the process in question, and to a great degree the size of the company. A smaller business which has people who are aware of the impact a change might make further down the line, maybe that’s OK. But in a larger organization, or if you’re a new employee, I don’t think you should have that right without oversight. YOU might think it’s the best thing since sliced bread, but it matters whether the change in question is based on a single instance, or whether it’s something more pervasive. It’s best to have a level-set conversation: "Joe made this suggested change. Should we do it? Any reason why not?" The oversight should be there, but shouldn’t be onerous. If the process is ruling the process, that’s not a great thing.

Andy: I sometimes ask it this way: Is BPM a noun or a verb? In other words, is it an ongoing activity versus a one-time "implementation?" (By the way, I’m thinking of copyrighting that, so don’t even think about it...)

Karin: That’s a nice way of saying it. Businesses are dynamic and constantly changing in response to their own internal and external drivers. BPM will constantly flow, evolve and change to support the organization.

Theresa: It can be both. (Oh rats). BPM as a guiding thought process could be part of your mission statement. But the action should not be static. It is not a one-time event. You should set up processes, but you should also review them from time to time, and be willing to tweak them.

In BPM, there are extremes. Extreme #1 is where people have ad hoc control over everything. That’s where you make the change here, and 20 steps down the line your website goes down. The other extreme is where you set up a business process in concrete. It’s there forever. It is inviolable. And you go away happy that you’ve made the change... whether it’s very good or not. Neither extreme is good. Businesses are fluid.